Mrs Riorden

Mrs Lee

Y4 Curriculum Newsletters

Autumn Term

Welcome back to school after the summer holidays! I am very much looking forward to the beginning of a new year with this class. We have such exciting topics to learn all about this year, I have no doubt that the children will love their learning!

RE

In RE, we have begun our learning journey all about ‘The Bible’. We thought carefully as a class about why we read The Bible and why it is such a special book.

The children have created a front page for The Bible to show how important and special it is. They really thought carefully about what to include on their front cover and thought about some important stories they could include to make this meaning clear.

We have continued with our learning and begun to think about the relationship that God had with Moses and Abraham. We thought carefully about the reasons why they trusted God and how much faith they must have had in God.

The children have then combined their RE and Art learning and we worked on our brush techniques whilst painting the Story of Moses and the Red Sea.

English

At the start of our first week, we were very lucky to have a visit from the author Tom Palmer. The children loved asking him lots of questions and it became very clear that there are some aspiring authors in Year 4! Tom shared his experiences of planning stories and he said he usually uses a big piece of paper to write down his ideas so we copied and did this too! He then helped us to plan our own story and the children enjoyed writing these. A very inspiring visit overall!

To begin our learning journey, we have started to use the Ancient Roman myth of ‘Remus and Romulus’. So far we have acted out the story and we will begin to create character descriptions and write our own version of this myth.

King and Queen Bee

In Year 4, we like to celebrate excellent editing skills. For any writing lesson, a child can be given a crown or our special BEE glasses to show that they have been found to be the Queen or King Bee! Look how happy our Queens and Kings look!

Maths

The children have already astounded me with their developing knowledge of place value. They showed great enthusiasm towards maths and quickly show they could read very large numbers! We have also worked on comparing numbers and the children have enjoyed learning how to use the < and > symbols. We now call these ‘Charlie the crocodile’ and in our class he ALWAYS eats the bigger number!

Science

Our first topic is ‘States of matter’. This has been a great topic so far and the children thoroughly enjoyed acting as the particles as solids, liquids, and gases. They were able to quickly put objects and items into categories and were even able to explain why tricky things such as rice and sugar are solids and not liquids! A very tricky concept!

Below are some pictures of us being molecules as solids. liquids and gases. Year 4 particularly liked being the gas molecules so they could run around in all directions!

We then moved onto seeing how temperature affects states of matter. We used chocolate and investigate how it would change state in 4 different ways: holding it on an open palm, holding it in a closed fist, with an open mouth on the tip of our tongue and holding it in our closed mouths. The children were fantastic at this and really understood how temperature affected the chocolate changing from a solid to a liquid. It was a very tasty experiment too!

We then moved onto ‘The Water Cycle’. Here are some pictures of the children creating their own version of the water cycle using plastic sandwich bags. We have them on our window to help us visualise the different parts of the cycle. The children loved doing this and like to keep a close eye on their bags to see how the water evaporates, turns into condensation, then acts like precipitation and then back to the water source again!

Topic

Our topic this half term is ‘The Romans’. The children have so far looked at how far the Roman Empire spread across the world and they were suitably surprised at how this included three continents!

We have also begun our learning in art about mosaics. The children learnt all about where these mosaics were placed in the Roman times and they began to develop their own designs to create a mosaic of their own. Keep an eye out for pictures of these- I am sure you will be suitably impressed!

PE

The children have been enjoying their PE learning which takes place every Tuesday and Wednesday. They have shown a developing understanding of team work and they clearly set themselves very high goals to improve their own fitness and strength!

We also have some keen footballers in Year 4 who have quickly signed themselves up for the football team. I look forward to being able to inform more about their successes on the pitch when playing against other schools!

Music

The children were very enthusiastic for their music lesson today and already in week 1 I could see they were picking up the different keys to use on a xylophone. Mrs Lee and Mrs Riordan were very impressed with their enthusiasm towards this learning!

The children have continued to impress and have been volunteering for singing solo in front of the class. We have some talented children in our class!

Autumn Term 2

Welcome back to school!

I am very excited for this coming half term. The children were so enthusiastic last half term I know we will continue to achieve some great things in all of our subject areas!

Trips this half term:

Science: Eureka.

English/ PSHE: Emoji Movie at Kirkstall Vue Cinema.

RE

In RE, we have begun our learning journey all about ‘Trust in God’. We really began this learning last half term so it has been a very quick transition into our new learning.

So far, the children have consolidated their knowledge all about finding verses in The Bible to help someone who is in need. Here are some of the children’s most used verses:

“

I think you will agree about how powerful these messages are! The children have become very familiar with these and are becoming more and more aware of how The Bible can help us within our own lives.

To begin our learning abut trust, the children completed some trust exercises with a partner. The children were blindfolded and had to lead one another around a course. The children loved this activity and enjoyed the hands-on approach to understand how it feels to trust and to be trusted.

Here are a few things that the children said about this activity.

“It was good to be trusted!”

“I felt fine! I knew I could trust my partner!”

“I was a bit worried at first in case I bumped into something, but then after a while I knew I could trust my partner”

English

In Year 4 we have been working hard on our new topic of instructions. The children have been taking on the role of Mr and Mrs Twit and have been creating revolting recipes. The children have learnt all about the features of instructions and the important language features they need to include. They quickly learnt how to use fronted adverbials (and now feel very confident with these), using alliteration, repeated questions to interest a reader AND they have even been using brackets! Their recipes are truly gruesome and I didn’t know they had it in them to use create such awful pranks!

Maths

We have begun our topic all about fractions and the children have had some hands-on learning to understand equivalent fractions. We started by using lots of different equipment and food to find equivalent fractions. The children were able to reason their fraction families well and have begun to understand exactly WHAT a fraction is! Below are some pictures of the fractions they made- we had great fun with this activity!

Science

In Science we have started a new topic all about teeth. The children were intrigued to learn just why our teeth all look different and were very surprised to learn that they all have different uses! We made some models using playdough to help us really understand the different shapes and sizes our teeth came in. This certainly wasn’t very easy as we had a few missing milk teeth in our class!

Eureka Trip

Year 3 and 4 had an AMAZING day at Eureka Children’s museum. The children loved the hands-on approach to learning and we very excited about all the activities they could take part in! The children also thoroughly enjoyed their ‘From Chew to Poo’ workshop! They were amazed to learn about the digestive system! Thank you to all of our parent volunteers that came with us- the children (and teachers!) really appreciated you being there!

Robot Week

We have been very lucky to have Robbie visit again! We were inspired by his visit to have a robot-themed week. Here are some pictures of our amazing artwork that we completed in the style of Karl Egenberger.

We also had the opportunity to work with Robbie in order to edit and improve a story. He had a rather boring story to start with so we really worked on our description. We took the opportunity too to give him some instructions to see how he is programmed. We were amazed at what he could do!

Project Reading Area!

Year 4 were delighted to hear that we were allocated some money to spend on our reading area. The children came up with their ideas and we decided on… SPACE! The pupils and all of the Year 4 teaching staff were pleased with this idea as it links well to our reading challenge of ‘Rocket Readers’. The children then used the internet to research what we could put in, put this into a spreadsheet, use formulas to tally up the costs to ensure we didn’t go over our budget (you are welcome Miss Milivojevic!). The items are now ordered and we are very excited to see how our newly designed reading area will look!

Spring Term 1

I hope you all had a very happy and holy Christmas holiday! We have lots to look forward to this half term and I am sure the children will continue to work very hard!

RE

In RE, we have begun our learning journey for our topic, ‘Jesus, the Teacher’.

We began our learning by focusing on Jesus’s presentation at the temple. The children wrote some exciting newspaper articles to retell this and they began to understand the viewpoints of different people of the time. The children understood how this showed that God always keeps His promise. We now know that February 2nd is the feast day for this so the children will be creating special prayers which we shall share in our prayer garden- weather permitting!

English

The children have been very enthused about their description skills this half term. We have learned the importance of expanded noun phrases and the children have begun to embed this knowledge in their writing. We also decided to work on our use of the senses when describing. We have worked hard on showing rather than tellingour readers. The children often read my modeled writing now and are quick to spot when I have forgotten this trick!

In Reading, the children have also begun their learning using the novel, ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’. We have boosted our understanding of using dictionaries to help us find these and the children are becoming more and more proficient at using a dictionary by the day!

As well as this, the children are continuing to develop their understanding of prefixes and suffixes. They have begun to learn the rules and enjoy using our tree on our working wall to add prefixes and suffixes to change the meaning of a root word! Picture coming very soon!

Maths

Fractions and decimals have continued to be key learning in our classroom this half term. So far we have brushed up on our knwoledge of:

Adding and subtracting fractions with the same denominator

Understanding the place value of decimal numbers

Multiplying and dividing by 10, 100 and 1000 which includes decimal numbers as the answer

Finding fraction and decimal equivalents

Finding fractions of amounts

Problem-solving with fractions and decimals.

The children have worked hard on this topic and are beginning to see how much progress they are making with their fractions knowledge. The Year 4 team are very proud of them!

KIRFS

Our focus this half term is times table and division facts up to 12x12. This is very important to learn in Year 4 and it is an essential part of our learning. The children are beginning to understand how quick recall of these facts helps with lots of areas in Maths. We absolutely love playing our games in class and it has become a very enjoyable (and very competitive) part of our day!

This half term, there will be a Show and Share session for parents to come join us for a session to learn different games/ strategies we can use to boost this area of their learning. I look forward to having our Year 4 parents come join us for these exciting lessons!

Science

In Science, we finished off our topic all about the digestive system. We watched some very useful videos all about the digestive system and how the food starts and ends and where all of the important nutrition goes too! We used our writing skills to write some very exciting information texts which were jam-packed full of information. Please see the click the link below to see what we learned!

Our next topic is all about Living Things and their Habitats. The children have so far learned what MRS NERG means and how this helps to determine if something is living or not. We even had to think about how plants do all of these important life processes- this isn’t always easy to understand!

Next, we moved onto food chains. Because the children were already so good at understanding herbivores, omnivores and carnivores from out teeth learning, they had no issue with sussing out which starts and finished the food chain!

Please copy the links below to brush up/prelearn any more of our topic for this half term!

Topic

Our topic this term is, ‘Planet Earth’. The children have begun their learning to find out all about physical and human features of the UK. We have developed our map skills and began to find some very famous places to put them on the map!

The children have also been learning to use the 8 points of a compass. We quickly learnt these directions and the children straight away had to use these to place features onto a map of Kenya. This also helped us to develop our understanding of using keys- I am sure this will be very useful during this topic!

Art

This half term, we have been creating stencils to print a repeating image. The children used cardboard, string and art straws to create their designs which were printed using paint onto plain paper. This took a lot of patience from Year 4 as string and PVA glue can be trickier to manipulate than you think!

PE

As well as our usual PE lessons, this half term the children were lucky enough to have a judo taster session! The children loved this opportunity and their behaviour throughout was outstanding. This session was intense fast-paced and with quick instructions- it was amazing to see the amount of progress the children made in such a short amount of time!

Judo sessions are now available for children on Friday evenings at St Joseph’s Church Hall. For any information about this, please see me and I will be happy to discuss this with you.

Music

Year 4 are continuing to really enjoy their learning with Mr Jennings and it is always a pleasure to see them learning new rhythms and songs that they perform altogether!

Young voices

Some of the children from our class, Year 5 and Year 6 took a trip to Sheffield Arena to be part of the Young Voices Choir. The children absolutely loved this opportunity and it was a resounding, “YES!”when the children were asked if they would go again! The children loved being part of a massive choir of 5201 children and really felt like they had taken part in a momentous occasion! The children behaved brilliantly and it was a pleasure to see them all dancing and singing to show that all their hard work had paid off!

PSHE

On Friday 19th January we had an excellent performance from the One Day Creative .The topics that were covered by the performance were:

Age limitations on social media

How to stay safe on social media

Cyberbullying and what to do if you are being bullied online

Emotional bullying

Verbal bullying

Physical bullying

Telling the truth

Staying private on social media

Using secure usernames and passwords

People can easily misread messages sent to them, it important to always be kind!

Year 4 absolutely loved this performance as it taught them important lessons in a comical way that the children truly understood. It answered lots of questions for the children and was a great way for us to start our anti-bullying learning this year.

Y4 Show and Share 1st & 2nd February 2018

100% of the parents said they found the session useful.

-It is always nice to see their learning environment and how they interact with peers/ teachers.

-It was good to be given ideas for learning times tables.

-I think it was lovely to see how to make maths fun. My child enjoyed me being in class and showing me how to play new games.

-Examples of games to play with children regarding times tables.

-Great ideas to use at home.

-Good to see what they do in lessons.

-Enjoyed learning and understanding the lesson they are being given. –Gave good ideas for games that can be played at home.

-Very good insight in learning multiples in a fun way.

-Found it enjoyable working and having fun!

-It was fun to see how much enjoyment the class got from learning times tables; clearly engaged in learning.

The parents said that the following worked well in the session:

-Being able to sit and play maths games with my child.

-Practical ideas.

-Playing my child’s game and how we can do quickfire.

-Interacting.

-Spending time with my child and seeing how they learn.

-Children looked happy!

-It highlighted what we needed to work on.

-Being able to interact in a group.

-Interactive learning.

-There was enough time to play each game so it didn’t feel rushed. It was nice to see how my child interacts witgh his peers too.

100% of the parents said that the session had given them ideas about how to support their child at home.

Some comments were:

-My child loves playing cards and is sporty too so we will play these games at home.

-Yes. Much more fun ideas for learning something that is potentially boring.

-Using the different way of learning and using the different techniques.

Yes, plenty of games!

-Yes definitely. I now know times table games and methods used in class.

What would you change about the session? All the comments from parents were positive and felt no changes to the session were needed.

Some extra comments from the session were:

-We enjoyed learning together.

-We enjoyed the competitive edge.

-We enjoyed learning together.

-Both my child and I enjoyed the session.

-Good work- thanks!

-It was relaxed and enjoyable- nice to see how interactive maths learning is today!

-I really enjoy these sessions.

-Lovely to see how well the children interact with Miss Clilverd.

Spring Term 2

“For with God nothing will be impossible,” Luke 1:37

English

The children have been working on their understanding of complex, compound and simple sentences. They have been absolutely marvellous and the Year 4 team could not be prouder of how their sentence structure is improving. We have really focused on our use of commas so that no longer that dreaded grammatical phrase of using a comma is, ‘My sentence was long so I just put one in!” We have played lots of games where a sentence is read aloud or put on the board and the children edit them- they have got the knowledge! Here are some pictures where the children have had to accurately punctuate dictated sentences outside!

We also worked on the fantastic book of, ‘Voices in the park.’ This story captivated us in many ways. We learnt the strong PSHE message of not to judge a book by its cover which the children truly understood! We then moved onto diary entries where the children got into the mindset of one of the main characters. They really enjoyed this and I have to say, I enjoyed marking their captivating reads!

World Book Day

We all love World Book Day and, despite the adverse weather conditions, we still celebrated it in style! The children had some excellent costumes and we all gained a great insight into their favourite books. It was no surprise to the Year 4 team that their were plenty of superheroes around (including the favourited Captain Underpants!)

Maths

In Maths, we had a X-Factor themed lesson which incorporated our learning about factors and applying this with the reasoning.

We then moved onto shape and angles. The children loved learning about different angles so it was no surprise how quickly they could discuss angles as a property of a shape! Further to this, we looked at many other properties of 2D shapes. We gathered a load of shapes together and organised them thinking about the key words on our working wall. Take a look at the pictures below to see how well they did!

Science

This half term, we continued to focus on the topic of Living Things and their Habitats. We learnt all about the different types of animal and creatures and we thought about where they lived and why. We used the computer suite a lot too to create some great word processed work which showed off our developing SmartArt skills!

Topic

As a class, we learnt all about different areas of, ‘Planet Earth’. The children have particularly loved learning all about deforestation in The Amazon Rainforest. They became very passionate about what they were learning and began to understand the impact this can have on the rainforest. They even used their writing skills to write from the viewpoint of an animal in the rainforest. They were very passionate about their habitats and very persuasive- I would be scared if I was one of the loggers!

PE

PE is a much loved lesson with Year 4! They have been working on their team work and ball skills in their ‘Games’ lessons.

Year 4 have also started taking swimming lessons on a Thursday morning! We had a few missed due to the continually reoccurring snow, but the children gave it all they had when they got to the pool! Fingers crossed we manage to get to all of our lessons in the summer term!

Wellbeing Week

Growth mindset

“It’s not that I’m smart, it’s that I stay with the problem longer,” Albert Einstein.

We began the week with an assembly all about Growth Mindset. The children learnt what it meant to have a fixed or growth mindset and they could quickly support in a drama performance which teacher modelled which mindset! We continued this in class where we thought about how we sometimes can have a fixed mindset to our work and how we can develop our own brains so that we are showing a growth mindset.

Someone who has a fixed mindset might say;

I can’t do this!

This work is too tricky.

I’m stuck so I’m giving up.

What’s the point in trying I couldn’t do it yesterday so I can’t do it today.

She’s so clever. I’ll never be that clever.

In Year 4 we are working really hard to stretch our brains! We love being challenged and are trying really hard not to give up when we find things tricky.

We are beginning to use phrases such as:

I can’t do it…….yet!!

This is tricky but I’m not going to give up.

I’m going to try a different strategy.

I can learn from my mistakes.

We will continue to develop our understanding of ‘Growth Mindset’ so please keep a close eye on our page to see what else we have learnt to develop this!

One-day Creative Workshop

As part of this week, we had a workshop which showed the children how to control and manage their feelings and behaviours. The children absolutely loved this workshop as it gave them ways to think about their emotions and to understand that we are OK to feel some ‘bad emotions’ but how to use this. We likened ourselves to sunflower seeds; we need to help ourselves to grow! The children made some great links to how God is the sun as he supports us to grow and gives us guidance when things are tricky! We will continue to make these links in our collective worship.

Easter Egg Hunt

We had such a great time taking part of the Easter Egg Hunt which was arranged by the Friends of St Joseph’s! The children got into their teams and had to find the missing answers to the hunt; they really knew their facts about the Easter Story!

Summer 1

“I am always doing things I can’t do YET in order to learn how to do it” Vincent Van Gogh.

The summer term has arrived! The children are working hard and I am sure they will enjoy this half term with its fun topics!

English

In English, we have begun our learning journey for writing instructions all about mummification. The children have been working on some drama to learn the different gruesome stages to mummifying so that when we get to writing, we can ensure we focus on our words and sentence structures to really interest our readers. The children loved doing this and it was a great opportunity to develop the language we use within instructions!

Science

Year 4 are absolutely loving our new topic all about sound. We were able to use some equipment to help us really see how sound is made from vibrations and we thoroughly enjoyed seeing who could make the biggest vibrations using a tuning fork and a glass of water! It is safe to say that the children learnt that more force, made bigger vibrations and thus a bigger sound/ splash!

We also made some telephones using cups and string. Two of the girls even came up with the idea of making a really long telephone to see if it still worked! With such a great idea, the children were able to find out that it did intact work but distance made the sound quieter. Parents, I am sure some of you will be asked to make these string telephones over the weekend!

Topic

We have begun our topic by focusing on mummification (which is obviously one of the most gruesome parts of the Ancient Egyptian times) and hieroglyphics. The children understood why hieroglyphics were used and they suddenly realised how writing today is a lot easier then it was for the scribes! We began by drawing our names onto cartouches. The children realised that spellings was different too so they really had to reconsider the phonics of their names!

Computing

The children are very excited as they will be spending this half term focusing on using Stop Motion to create their own animations. We worked together in small groups to plan the animations and the children quickly began to design their backgrounds and settings for the animation. We can’t wait until the next computing lesson so that we can get on with the actual animations!

Visit from the Franciscan Sisters

This week we had a visit from the Franciscan Sisters. They began by leading a whole school assembly about who they are and the work they do. They spoke about how they help with the poor and that we can help through small acts of kindness. The whole school will be helping them with their work by donating food to the food bank over the next couple of days. The sisters also told us all about what they wear and what each part of their clothes symbolises. They came into class later to show us some other songs which the children really enjoyed! Thank you very much to our visitors!

PE

Orienteering

Year 4 had a great orienteering session today! The children were unsure to begin with but so many of them said at the end that it was one of their favourite PE sessions ever!

The children were given maps of the school grounds and were asked to go find the numbered flags which were dotted around. This meant that the children had to begin by orientating the map which was not an easy task! Soon, Year 4 made this look easy! They surpassed the leaders expectations as they were so quick at picking up their new skills.

The Year 4 team were very proud at the effort the children put into this learning.

Sunflower Competition

We had a great time planting our sunflower seeds for the competition. The children were supplied pots, seeds and compost (from the FOSJ) ready to see if the seeds will grow. The children have all taken these home and are to look after them and see if they can grow if they can grow the tallest sunflower! I look forward to seeing if we have any award-winning sunflowers!

Piano Fantasia at Leeds City Hall

We had a great trip to Leeds City Hall this week. The children listened to a musical story all about a boy who wanted a rocket for Christmas but ended up with a piano instead. It was a comical performance that made us laugh throughout! The children were also taken back in time and we learnt all about Bach and Beethoven. The children saw a range of pianos and we were shown how a piano works. This was a great link to our Science topic because we could feel the vibrations under our feet!

Since we came back, it has been great to hear that one of the children has wiped the dust off of his keyboard and is keen to get playing again!

Royal Wedding Celebrations

Like most of the UK population, we were keen to celebrate the wedding of Harry and Meghan! The children came in their favourite party clothes and we had a day to remember! We spent the day creating bunting for our celebratory afternoon tea, designing wedding cakes and dresses fit for a royal event!

In our class, we had some masks too so it really felt like we were surrounded by royalty! See if you can spot any familiar faces!